Re: Will Queens Bus Redesign really speed things up?

That's a question only the MTA can answer. They know what legally they can and cannot do. Given that factor, I would think Queens would be more complicated than the other boroughs and would think it should be the last borough studied. That would give the MTA a few more years to perhaps allow them to integrate the two agencies a little more. But I think the purpose of this study is just to cut costs and see where they can eliminate service, not to improve service for the passengers. Maybe they view Queens as least able to resist service cuts so they are doing the study now.

They will probably take the same tact as they did in 2010. Announce so many service cuts at once so that politicians and residents will only be able to focus on and fight the worst ones, knowing the others will get through, so their goal is accomplished to run less service and lower operating expenses. Ridership will of course continue to decline under that scenario.

Queens and Staten Island are the two boroughs that need the most additional service. If any borough has too much bus service, it would be Manhattan. But they know cutting service in Manhattan would receive the most opposition, so they are putting off studying that borough.

They only want you to think the goal is to make service better. When the Bronx proposals are released, that will tell you what to expect for the other boroughs. If it receives much opposition and fails like the Staten Island Express Study, I wouldn't be surprised if they call it quits after the Queens study without studying the others, concluding like they did in the mid-eighties that bororough studies just don't work.

Re: Will Queens Bus Redesign really speed things up?

Don't disagree. I have a plan for a separate Brooklyn night time network where alternate routes could operate every 30 minutes using the same numbers of buses to operate every 60 minutes. I will share it in a few weeks along with my Brooklyn daytime route restructuring.

Re: Will Queens Bus Redesign really speed things up?

The problem with your 30 min headway suggestion is that the subways run on 20 min headways overnight so any true feeder bus service would have to operate on a multiple of that. Any service that does not provide as close as possible to a seamless service is a disservice.

Re: Will Queens Bus Redesign really speed things up?

I realize that, but it also means a zero, ten, or 20 minute wait, instead of up to an hour wait if you just miss a bus. Still a great improvement at no cost. If you want to spend the extra money you could have 20 minute service at a few very important stations like Utica/Eastern Parkway and Flatbush/Nostrand.

Re: Will Queens Bus Redesign really speed things up?

Yes contemporary planning practices such as having exclusive bus lanes operate on Saturdays and Sundays although no buses are operating on the street. (Kings Highway between Avenue K and Flatbush Avenue.) Contemporary practices such as SBS routes which cost far more to operate than traditional local and limited routes that are only slightly faster and more reliable according to the NYC Comptroller and have not reversed the decline in bus patronage. Exclusive bus lanes that are not enforced. Priority signals that are only talked about and exist in few places. spending $180 million to increase average bus speeds by a mile per hour and have virtuallly no effect on passenger travel times. Filling service gaps by operating all new routes only every 30 minutes. Yes, those are the traditional planning practices that have not worked and ones you want to continue. Perhaps we need a new approach that actually makes passenger travel times faster by reducing the number of needed connections and eliminates double fares and reduces walking times to buses rather than increases them as proposed by eliminating bus stops en masse.

Re: Will Queens Bus Redesign really speed things up?

Where are the statistics that show how much time is actually saved by paying your fare beforehand? On 86 Street where there are no exclusive bus lanes only about 90 seconds was saved for the entire trip?

Where is the cost benefit analysis that shows the tine savings is worth the cost and maintenance of the fare machines?

How much fare evasion is on the SBS routes? M15 paid ridership is way down on the M15 even before the SAS opened.

There needs to be real analyses of paying beforehand and the benefits of exclusive bus lanes, not blind trust in the MTA.

Re: Will Queens Bus Redesign really speed things up?

On 86 Street where there are no exclusive bus lanes only about 90 seconds was saved for the entire trip?

I'm not familiar with 86th Street. But if you told me that would be the time savings for the M14A/D I would know you were smoking something. I have frequently observed the eastbound M14 spend more than 3 minutes loading passengers just at the Irving Place stop.

In fairness, the M14 is scheduled for SBS in June. I probably picked one of the worst examples in the system.

Re: Will Queens Bus Redesign really speed things up?

I always found it interesting how so much of the Queens bus network is subway feeder-centric even though some of its busiest routes (Q10, Q23, Q25, Q44, Q58, Q65, etc) are much more than that. I would also love to know the history behind some of the routing decisions that were made in the past, like why the Q36/Q110 and Q23/Q48 are set up the way they are, and why the Q104 goes down 48th Street among other things.

Re: Will Queens Bus Redesign really speed things up?

Ride any bus in Europe and you can see what prepaid fares and/or all door boarding can do to speed up a trip. As pointed out elsewhere, 90 seconds on a 20 minute one way trip is not insignificant over the course of a day.

As long as the cost and maintenance of the machines, as well as fare evasion, are less than the cost of collecting each and every fare, the honor system is justified from a financial standpoint. Don't forget that some of your $2.75 covers the cost of getting your payment in the first place, that adds up as well.

There isn't blind trust in the MTA, there is a recognition of what works elsewhere and ought to work in NYC as well. It is common sense.

Re: Will Queens Bus Redesign really speed things up?

1. Point to point service via one seat rides between most areas is rarely faster than streamlined routes with forced transfers.

2. Your desire to reduce double fare charges is perhaps the only thing you advocate for that makes sense. NYC is one of the few places I can think of that doesn't allow unlimited transfers for a set period of time once you pay an initial fare. I guess a stopped clock is right twice a day.

3. I'd rather walk a little further to the bus if that means a faster trip once I get to the bus stop. How come transit ridership in places like Europe and Asia isn't suffering even though the bus stops in those places are much further apart on average than in the US? Oh, and senior citizens manage to get to the stops despite the longer distances.

4. There are plenty of reasons to leave the bus lanes open, even if there isn't frequent service at a given time of day. Bus lanes move far more people than regular traffic lanes, even though they often carry just a percentage of all the people on a given street. This is only problematic if you are focused on not inconveniencing SOVs, which seems to be your goal.

5. You have not demonstrated that the SBS ridership patterns are not reflective of overall ridership trends in NYC.

6. Exactly how are SBS costs higher when run time is lower, cycle time is lower, and therefore vehicle requirements are lower yet more service can be provided?

7. Yes, priority signals should exist and not just be talked about. But why all the consternation from your end? Slight increases in average bus speed can yield significant savings over time.

Re: Will Queens Bus Redesign really speed things up?

3. That's you. When you get older, your thinking will change. When I was younger I never gave it a thought when I stepped up or down a curb. It was just automatic. Now the stairs on an RTS bus were a problem at times. Seniors "manage" to get to bus stops. Ask them how they feel about it or much longer it takes them. Where I live they eliminated my bus stop in 2006. The next one is only 200 away which is not that much of a problem except for 30 percent of the tine when it means me missing the bus I otherwise would gave caught. Not to mention the ten extra minutes I sometimes had to wait in the rain for it. And as for the buses going faster, the stops were so lightly used that it was very rare any bus had to make both stops on the same trip anyway.

4. Yes, the goal is see how much we can inconvenience SOVs to discourage driving. When a bus that carries under ten passengers and runs once every half hour, it makes no sense for the bus lane to be in effect, because zero bus passengers benefit while hundreds of cars are inconvenienced. Yet that's what happens on two blocks of Kings Highway on Sundays. For the rest of the bus lane, there are buses only every 20 minutes. There are many more people in the cars than are in the buses, so it makes no sense to inconvenience them especially when the bus passengers do not benefit anyway because the lanes do not allow them to go any faster anyway. The average bus speed before the lanes was 21 mph in a 25 mph speed limit zone without SBS according to DOT's own data.

5. Don't understand what you are saying.

6. According to the Existing Conditions Report for the Bronx Bus Network Redesign, on Page 98, there are five routes that turn a profit, with the Bx12 SBS leading the pack. However, when considering the cost of fare enforcement and fare machine maintenance, all SBS routes are financial losers.

7. A one mph average bus speed increase saves the average passenger making a 2.3 mile trip amounts to a negligible time savings. But missing a bus because of a removed bus stop can add 10 or 20 minutes to your trip increasing your trip time by 30 or 50 percent.

Re: Will Queens Bus Redesign really speed things up?

From what a friend of mine who went to Germany told me, the LRVs and buses also have fare machines on board the vehicle in the event that either the machine on the street is out of order or the passenger doesnít have enough time to pay the fare on the street if a bus or tram is coming and the headways are long.

Re: Will Queens Bus Redesign really speed things up?

What other cities besides NYC also have is the opportunity, if you have a time-based farecard pass (3-day, 7-day, etc.) to skip the fare machines altogether (your pass is your POP). It wouldn't surprise me if that could warrant less available machines, or at least keep them better maintained with less usage. When MetroCard is phased out, it will probably happen in NYC too.

When on vacation in some of these places, there's nothing like (legally) walking out of your hotel in the morning onto a bus/tram without reaching into your pocket.

Re: Will Queens Bus Redesign really speed things up?

Look at the MTA report before concluding I am wrong. You say 90 seconds is very significant. How many ride river to river to save that 90 seconds? Practically zero. That means an average rider saves like 15 seconds, hardly significant.

Re: Will Queens Bus Redesign really speed things up?

You are looking at it as savings for the bus operator, not for the passenger. Why stop at one day, add up 90 seconds per trip over the course of a day or over a decade? It still saves an average passenger only 15 seconds from an average 30 or 45 minute trip. Totally insignificant in making trips faster for the passenger which is what it is advertised as.

And as for saving money regarding not having to remove coins from the machines, totally insignificant when compared to the costs and maintenance of the fare machines which cost $50,000 each or $100,000 per bus stop, Money that could be spent better elsewhere. And on the Q52/53, the report showed that with the fare machines and exclusive lanes, passengers making trips of three miles saves only three minutes. Again insignificant when you consider the average passenger trip time.

Re: Will Queens Bus Redesign really speed things up?

Thatís why so many trips in Queens that you canít make by subway requires three buses, a big deterrent from using the system. This study really needs to concentrate on making more three bus trips possible with two bus trips, not reducing bus stops and making the system more inaccessible.

Re: Will Queens Bus Redesign really speed things up?

6. I don't understand. If the Bx12 is the most profitable, how are all SBS routes financial losers? You've admitted that at least one SBS route is profitable.

Regarding SBS: There's also a matter of perception. When I rode the B44 and B46 SBS, it felt faster and more efficient such that I didn't regret taking the bus instead of a more roundabout subway route. I don't know if the old limited would have felt the same way.

Re: Will Queens Bus Redesign really speed things up?

It's profitable when you don't consider the cost of enforcement or the cost of maintaining the fare machines. In fact it is more profitable than any other route. When you add in those other costs, then it loses money and no routes are profitable.

There still are other elements of the equation that are not discussed. That is the revenue from summonses for fare evasion and the administrative costs to collect that revenue.. Maybe some or all of that revenue does not go to the MTA and if it does, it may not go back to fund the buses but to other parts of the MTA.

Re: Will Queens Bus Redesign really speed things up?

In some cases it may be more than perception. I was surprised recently when I somewhat randomly plugged in an Elmhurst-to-Marine Park itinerary that I do on occasion and instead of the usual two primary ways (Q53 through Rockaways to Q35; or Queens Blvd subway to Manhattan for B/Q train to Midwood for bus) Google Maps suggested as the best routing for that moment the Queens Blvd subway to the G train to Bedford/Nostrand for the B44 SBS.

Obviously exact origin/destination streets and exact timing will be the difference maker, but I'm sure with the new SBS stop on Ave R, this is probably happening for more and more itineraries.

Re: Will Queens Bus Redesign really speed things up?

At the same time, three buses that show up are way better than two buses that don't. Reliability is paramount. While it would be nice to be able to have "personal" routes that take me long distances to obscure locations, they won't matter to me if they are scheduled infrequently (because I'm practically the only person engaging such an itinerary) and then are unreliable besides because of the trip length. I'd rather hop-on, hop-off a series of buses that come at high frequency and are low-stress than hope that my "charter" will show up.

Re: Will Queens Bus Redesign really speed things up?

I would also add it would be a shame if a borough map is redrawn right before a change in fare structure, that is if a map is drawn in light of the double-fare penalty for using a third bus, and then a month later a new structure allows you to get on said third bus without said penalty.

Re: Will Queens Bus Redesign really speed things up?

Some of the Trip Planner itineraries charge double fare and additional running time when there need not be.

The IRT from Manhattan to Riis Beach is an example. It insists that I take the B41 2 blocks from the subway station to Target to get the Q35. How many people drive, take the Ferry, call Uber, or take the A train instead because of such stupidity ?

Re: Will Queens Bus Redesign really speed things up?

I never use the trip planner because I found that it's inferior to other apps. But Google and others still insist on double-fare routings and there is no option to force otherwise. Some might be willing to trade cost for speed or convenience, but others won't.

Re: Will Queens Bus Redesign really speed things up?

I am a bit confused, so bear with me.
Are there statistics of how much time is saved? Do there need to be statistics. Buses move faster because you don't have to wait for a line of 17 people to all dip. Was that not understood? It takes less time, because of the dipping. Multiply the time spent dipping by passengers, and you get some time saved. But those dipping are not the ones saving the time. It's about the people already sitting on the bus waiting for 17 people to dip that are gonna be docked pay for arriving late at work. Is that not how it works?
As far as the cost-benefit analysis: is there a way to do it that would account for Joe Schmoe getting docked pay for being late because of the dipping? I have never heard of that. At some point these studies are really just fluffy experiments in writing big what-if equations.
The TA said fare evasion is way up across the city. How could you properly evaluate SBS fare evasion when it's part of a much larger trend?
Besides, I thought that new fare payment which is rolling out in a year or two would eliminate the machines on the street anyway. Didn't the new president promise that we would be able to go in any door and tap like on the DC Metro?
So, what, after you take the machines off the street, is SBS? Are they doing the redesigns to replace SBS with real BRT?
But I do agree that the TA is overly optimistic with their advertising faster trips. They do go faster, but more like just to not continue going slower. It's not like they're flying along as fast as they did 15 or 20 years ago.

Re: Will Queens Bus Redesign really speed things up?

I'll use the Trip Planner for each individual route and piece it together. Most people won't bother with all those steps.

You should see the ridiculous nonsense NJT comes up with. Intrastate bus trips routed via PABT, avoids the Newark Broad Street subway branch to get between the 2 rail stations and avoids via Hoboken options for inter-divisional rides, even when the Waterfront connection has service.

Re: Will Queens Bus Redesign really speed things up?

Most agencies don't even use the fares.txt file in their GTFS feeds, and it has a ton of limitations. I'm not aware of any trip planner used by a transit agency that prioritizes least expensive fare when ordering results.

Re: Will Queens Bus Redesign really speed things up?

1. Experience. Others on this thread have basically said the same thing. You're in a dwindling minority of people who believe this is a good way to plan transit services.

3. If they eliminate your stop and it takes you longer to walk there, then leave home earlier. You didn't actually address my point about why this isn't an issue in the rest of the world.

4. This is why bus lanes make sense, even if they appear underutilized to someone such as you. Click here.

5. Of course you don't, because if you did, we wouldn't be having this discussion. Is the decline of SBS ridership statistically significant when compared to the overall decline in bus ridership citywide? If yes, then even if all ridership is decreasing, SBS ridership is not declining by nearly as much. How much of SBS ridership has just shifted from other regular services? There are all sorts of questions that are open to discussing, but simply looking at the raw data as you do without inferring anything else from it is not a good way to make decisions about what should happen with regards to transit policy (or anything else).

6. Either it makes a profit or it doesn't. I can assure you the costs of collecting fares and the cost of lost fares due to evasion are factored in to the decision to launch SBS.

7. What about a 1 MPH average bus speed increase for the 40 people on board the bus when compared to your lost travel time because you couldn't leave home early enough to make it to the bus stop on time?

Re: Will Queens Bus Redesign really speed things up?

The point is, it does not regard Brooklyn College and the Q35 departure point as transfer. It stupidly put you on another bus for 1 or 2 blocks, depending on which end you get out of the subway station.